Posts from January 2012

January 12, 2012

As you may know, the terminally perky little musical Lysistrata Jones closed this past weekend on Broadway after only 30 performances, despite a near-rave from Ben Brantley of the New York Times. The show moved to Broadway in December after a critically lauded run downtown at The Gym at Judson, only to discover that many of the same critics who loved the show Off-Broadway were far less enthusiastic when the show opened on the main stem.

Was it the change in venue that made the difference? Did the show work better in the funky gymnasium atmosphere than it did in the gilt-edged opulence of the Walter Kerr?

Not for me. This may come off as smug, but I was one of the critics whose opinion didn't change between the two productions. I found the Off Broadway version of Lysistrata Jones inconsistent and unengaging (read my review), and my opinion of the Broadway production remains virtually the same. The only improvement that I noticed was the new logo, which is miles above the hideous, garish, amateurish logo from the downtown production. (Click through to my review to see the OB logo.)

Sure, there were changes to the show, but they were mostly superficial. The set design is far more lavish, and book writer Douglas Carter Beane seems to have updated a few of the glib topical references, but these added nothing to the effectiveness of the piece itself. With the Off-Broadway production, one of my key problems with the piece was that the score didn't match the witty tone of the book. But upon second viewing, the book isn't so much witty as jokey, replete with one-liners but lacking in any larger cohesion or significance.

In his book for Xanadu, Beane deftly maintained the unifying themes of playfulness and self-conscious irony. Here, the characters merely spout interchangeable quips. At one point, one character says, "The best theater is always a movie first. That way the audience doesn't have to worry about being surprised." It's telling that I can recall the line, but I can't for the life of me remember which character said it.

In this sense, Beane's book represents a throwback to about a century ago, when musicals were stuffed with topical references, irrespective of whether they had any relevance to the show. Off Broadway, one of the characters made a quip about Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Perhaps you can recall the name, but can you remember why he would have been topical during the Off Broadway run? No? Well, in its place, we have a line in which the title character taunts her boyfriend about the new uniforms for the cheer-leading squad, which she promises will make the boys "stiffer than Kim Jong-il." Both references are ephemeral, tangential, and indicative of the superficial nature of the humor as a whole. (Some of the jokes are already way past their sell-by date, including one reference to someone receiving Greek lessons from Kitty Dukakis. Really?)

That said, Beane's book is a damn sight more enjoyable than the show's score, by Lewis Flinn. Sure, Beane renders the anti-war message of Aristophanes' original Lysistrata meaningless by changing the motivation for the women withholding sex from their men. In the original, it's to stop an interminable war. Now, it's to get them to break the thirty-year losing streak of the college basketball game. But there are at least a significant number of laughs to be had.

Flinn's songs start on the fun-but-unmemorable side, but they eventually bog the show down as they veer away from the comic sensibility of the book and become increasingly earnest. I only recall laughing once during one of the songs: in "Lay Low," the basketball captain exhorts his teammates to rise to the challenge that their girlfriends have set before them by riding it out. "That's why God invented porn," he sings. Yeah, not brilliant, or particularly original, but it gave me a chuckle.

Worse, Flinn's lyrics are typically either generic or meaningless. During the song "Hold On," Lysistrata's burgeoning new love interest Xander encourages her not to abandon her chosen path: "Hold on. Don't let go. In the morning when the lights are low." Um, why would lights be low in the morning? Why would they be on at all? And, more to the point, what does this have to do with what's going on in the scene at hand? I must admit that the tune to "Hold On" was kind of catchy, and it remained the only song to stick with me beyond the final curtain, but I attribute this more to the bouncy nature of the song's musical hook than to its inherent meaningfulness.

On the plus side, director/choreographer Dan Knechtges consistently found ways to make the numbers interesting, engaging, even exciting at times. Knechtges has a wonderfully dynamic sense of how to dress a stage, as well as how to find movements that exist within the idiom of the show. Particularly impressive was how he found ways to make the basketball moments seem believable without making them literal. I never got the sense that these were dancers who were trying to act like ball players, but rather that they were ball players who were also really strong dancers. (It would be interesting to see what Knechtges could do with West Side Story. Maybe, for once, we'd actually have some masculine, menacing Jets.)

Also, my heart goes out to the game and fresh-faced cast of Lysistrata Jones. Although I really wasn't a fan of the piece itself, it was great to see talented and energetic performers get a chance to show what they can do. Patti Murin in particularly was sweet and appealing as Lysistrata, as she was Off Broadway. Josh Segarra really seemed to have grown into his role as Mick, Lyssie's boyfriend, bringing a much stronger comedic sensibility and confidence to the role. Hopefully, we'll see these bright young performers, not to mention their equally talented castmates, on the stage again sometime very soon.

January 09, 2012

I've heard a lot of apologists for Bonnie & Clyde say that it was surprisingly good. You know, for a Frank Wildhorn show. Well, saying that Bonnie & Clyde is Wildhorn's least awful musical is sort of like saying leukemia is the most survivable form of cancer, or that Mitt Romney is the most electable Republican. They're still bad.

And Bonnie & Clyde is bad. True, the show, which closed on Broadway last week after only 36 performances, represents a vast improvement over such unmitigated dreck as Jekyll & Hyde and Dracula, but Bonnie & Clyde is nonetheless still well within the realm of the awful, and thus a perversely appropriate addition to the Wildhorn oeuvre.

Much like Wonderland, Wilhorn's most recent Broadway disaster, Bonnie & Clyde starts relatively strong. After a brief prologue that illustrates in graphic detail where our story will be heading, we get a dual character number, "This World Will Remember Me," which succinctly sets up the base motivations of both Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

But then, book writer Ivan Menchell seems hell-bent on making us feel sympathy for these sociopaths. Now, there's nothing wrong with an antihero in a musical, but for the treatment to be successful, you either need to have a larger, perhaps satirical, point that you're trying to make (as in Chicago) or you need to draw a clear line between understanding and approval (as in Sweeney Todd). In Menchell's book, there's a disturbing tendency to try to justify the horrific actions of Clyde Barrow in particular. While in prison, Clyde is shown at the mercy of menacing guards who take leering pleasure in pimping Clyde out to his fellow inmates. We also see the Ted Hinton character, a rival for Bonnie's affections, cause unprovoked physical harm to Clyde while he's in Hinton's custody. Aw, poor Clyde. It kind of felt like the beginning of "Gladiator" or "Death Wish" or "Robocop," or another of those reprehensible revenge-porn fantasies that try to justify violent acts with, "Well, he started it."

As for Wildhorn's music, well, he certainly has a way with a pleasant melody, but once again he falls victim to the Andrew Lloyd Webber ailment of choosing lyricists who debase rather than ennoble his music. Wildhorn fittingly partners here with lyricist Don Black, a frequent Lloyd Webber collaborator (Aspects of Love, Sunset Boulevard, Song and Dance), and the results are every bit as uninspired as in any of Black's Lloyd Webber shows.

Usually, the point at which Wildhorn loses me is the first bland power ballad, but in Bonnie & Clyde, my departure point was "When I Drive," in which Clyde and his brother Buck regale us about their love of cars. Yup, cars. I suppose this number was meant to show the bond between the brothers, and to establish their desire for material comforts, but for me it was the first in a series of questionable song motivations. Perhaps the most questionable was "Dyin' Ain't So Bad," a real howler of an 11 o'clock number in which Bonnie seems to cast off the strictures of dramatic irony and sings with impassioned resignation as to her inexorable fate.

Another point that the Bonnie & Clyde apologists seemed to harp on is the cast, and here they certainly have a point. As the despicable duo themselves, we have Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan, and they were indeed sensational in their respective roles. In the supporting cast, Claybourne Elder and Melissa Van Der Schyff were vivid and memorable in their portrayals of Clyde's brother Buck and his long-suffering wife. But, frankly, I've never been one to say that a show is worth seeing simply because of the cast. To me, that's kind of like saying that the sets and the costumes were cool, even if the show itself was wanting. I hope to see all four performers again very soon, perhaps in a piece more worthy of their talents.

On a final note, I just can't let the opportunity pass to ask one burning question: Who are these people that keep funding these Wildhorn musicals? Beyond the subjective quality of the shows at hand, it really seems that, as investors, they don't seem to be doing much in the way of due diligence. I mean, take a look at Wildhorn's Broadway track record:

Talk about your diminishing returns. Now, Bonnie and Clyde reportedly only cost a relatively thrifty $6 million. That's about half of what you'd expect a typical Broadway musical to cost these days. Even so, I would respectfully submit to these fine people that their money would serve a far greater use in the long run if they, I don't know, maybe donated it to the Boston Conservatory. Think of it as an investment in the future of the musical theater. I can virtually guarantee a far more favorable return on your investment.

January 04, 2012

I had been hearing really great things about the revised version of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, which has been kicking around for a few years now in various workshops and readings. In fact, the advance word was so strong, and the sources so reliable, that On a Clear Day was easily one of the Broadway productions this season that I was most eagerly anticipating.

And then I saw the show.

I'm going to give my sources the benefit of the doubt and assume that something has been lost in the translation, but in all honesty, there are certain fundamental flaws with this new version of On a Clear Day that I can only assume must have been part of the show since the revision was conceived.

Some history: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever has never been much of a hit, despite the popularity of the title song. The original production ran less than a year, and the 1970 movie version is a curiosity at best, notable mostly for the presence of Barbra Streisand in the central role of Daisy Gamble. The main liability of both the stage and movie versions is the wackjob story line by Alan Jay Lerner, which focuses on such offbeat topics as psychoanalysis, telepathy, and reincarnation. According to John Cullum, the star of the original stage version, there's a fairly understandable reason why the show seems like it was written by someone on drugs. Lerner was taking LSD while he was writing it.

But Burton Lane's marvelous score to On a Clear Day, full of jaunty, upbeat numbers (my favorite is "Hurry, It's Lovely Up Here") and soaring ballads (particularly the haunting "Melinda"), has always had its adherents, and rightly so. Apparently the prospect of taking the marvelous Lerner and Lane songs and fashioning a more workable book around them was too much for director Michael Mayer and playwright by Peter Parnell to resist. Their efforts might have amounted to nothing more than an academic exercise had it not been for one man: Harry Connick Jr., who apparently saw enough in Mayer and Parnell's version of the show (or at least the Lerner/Lane score) to sign on for what he no doubt hoped would be a triumphant return to Broadway after the sold-out success of The Pajama Game in 2006.

Connick certainly gets props for returning in such a risky project. As you may have heard, Parnell and Mayer have given Daisy Gamble a gender reassignment: it's now Davey Gamble (an adorable David Turner) who enters the office of Dr. Mark Bruckner (Connick) in the hope of quitting smoking. Davey is a gay man who is having trouble committing to moving in with his boyfriend. Under hypnosis, Davey reverts back to a previous life in which he was Melinda Wells, an up-and-coming World War II big band singer, played here by sensationally talented newcomer Jesse Mueller. Dr. Bruckner finds himself drawn to Melinda, and, well, the plot thickens from there, bringing Dr. Bruckner into a rather dicey love triangle.

Which is all well and good. I have no problem with outlandish plots or daring subject matter. I do, however, have problems with both Parnell's new book and Mayer's direction of same. Parnell's dialog is often painfully plodding and expository, particularly when it comes to explaining the Freudian underpinnings of the good doctor's obsession. But the most egregious elements for me were the tortured song setups. Most of the songs (which were cherry-picked from the stage version as well as the songs that were added for the movie) seemed to fit nominally within the new scenario, but none of them really embraces it fully. And there were a few songs that seemed wedged in with a crowbar.

For instance, "Wait 'Til We're Sixty Five" in the original story is sung by Warren, a stuffy young man who is old way before his time. The satirical lyric describes how Warren has his finances all planned, and the couple will have it free and easy in their retirement. But when Warren sings the song in the new version, it doesn't make any sense, because the new Warren isn't stuffy. What's more, the song is meant to convey how Warren and Daisy don't belong together, but that's inconsistent with how things develop in the new version. And as for the line "If the children never mature, what the hell the bonds will so we're secure," the show takes place in the 1970s, and the idea of a '70s gay couple assuming that they'll have children is anachronistic.

And then there's "When I'm Being Born Again," which in the original is sung by a rich Greek businessman who wants to find a way to be reincarnated so he can leave his fortune to himself. In the new version, the song becomes part of some mystical be-in kind of happening that the good doctor is holding with his psychiatry students. The new context renders meaningless the fractured English syntax (for instance, the deliberately awkward phrasing in the title), and makes the references to the character's avarice and materialism ("Don't cross the line! Those toys are mine!") jarringly inappropriate for the scene.

What's more, Parnell fails to follow his own rules. Early in the show, Dr. Bruckner tells Davey he won't remember anything that happens while he is under hypnosis. But Parnell seems to conveniently forget this dictum in the number "On the S.S. Bernard Cohn," during which Davey regales his friends with the seemingly romantic night that he has just spent with Dr. Bruckner. I suppose it's possible that, just that once, Dr. Bruckner was remiss in his post-hypnotic instructions, but I think it's more likely that this is just lazy writing.

Beyond the plot holes, the main liability for this On a Clear Day is that the pace starts off rather sluggish and never really recovers from that listlessness. The show perks up considerably whenever Turner and Mueller are on stage, which is thankfully a large portion of the show. But whenever the stage belongs to Connick, the pace grinds to a halt. Connick is quite the singer, but he seemed uncomfortable in the role, and I don't recall seeing him smile even once. Act 2 got particularly bogged down in making sure Connick got his full complement of power-ballad moments.

Despite Connick's presence, On a Clear Day has been playing to rather anemic houses, with heavily discounted tickets. According to Michael Riedel of the New York Post, Connick's contract is for 34 weeks, which is about 240 performances. If the show can make it through the notoriously chilly months of January and February, it might have a shot of making it to the end of Connick's contract. But I don't see him extending, nor do I envision anyone stepping in to take his place.

January 02, 2012

I like to think that nobody deliberately sets out to write a bad musical. Every composer, lyricist, and librettist who has ever set pen to paper, hands to piano keys, or fingers to computer keyboard has had it in his or her mind to craft something of quality.

But, as I'm fond of telling my students, quality is always the exception. In any art form, there will always be a bell curve of artistic achievement. The factors that contribute to the creation of the works in the top percentiles are just as numerous and ineffable as those that drive the works at the bottom. And there's really no predicting which ideas will lead straight to artistic success, nor which ideas will lead to disappointment.

In my previous post, I listed what I considered to be the Best Musicals of 2011. Now, let's focus on the worst. The following list comprises the disasters, the defeats, the debacles, the downfalls, the drubbings of the year, with comments from me as to why, at least for me, the shows came up short. I think some of you will be surprised by some of the omissions: Bonnie & Clyde, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Lysistrata Jones, Queen of the Mist, The Legend of Julie, Lucky Guy, Silence - The Musical. All are shows that I wrote negative reviews about (or am about to, in the case of Bonnie and Clyde and On a Clear Day), and that could easily have made the list. But I found the following ten musicals, for a variety of reasons, more egregious than any of those. And it's my list, so there.

Click on the initial mention of the title of each show to read my original reviews.

10. Yeast Nation - The follow-up show from Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann, the creators of Urinetown, had been a long time aborning when it finally made it to NYC under the auspices of the New York Fringe Festival, which, not coincidentally, was where Urinetown received its breakthrough production. Yeast Nation was the runaway hit of the Festival this year, selling out all of its performances before the Festival even got under way, based solely on the Urinetown pedigree. So expectations were high, but unfortunately Yeast Nation most decidedly failed to meet those expectations. The main problem for me was that Kotis and Hollmann didn't seem to have anything to say that they hadn't already said, and in a far more effective way, in Urinetown. Yeast Nation played like an uninspired retread, both in terms of conception and execution. Because of my deep respect for Urinetown, I remain open to the possibility that Kotis and Hollmann might some day create another groundbreaking, smart, and/or entertaining musical. Yeast Nation, alas, seems extremely unlikely to develop in any of those directions.

9. Catch Me if You Can - Another major disappointment with a world-class pedigree. With all the talent involved in Catch Me If You Can, both behind the scenes and on-stage, you'd think we'd get something even half as good as Hairspray, the previous effort of most of the creative staff. No such luck. Despite the presence of composer Marc Shaiman, lyricist Scott Wittman, director Jack O'Brien, choreographer Jerry Mitchell, and librettist Terrence McNally - all Broadway veterans with more than a century of Broadway experience among them - Catch Me If You Can was an irritating and depressing affair. The entire evening suffered from a lack of purpose and focus, leaving high and dry some of Broadway's most experienced and talented performers (including Aaron Tveit, Norbert Leo Butz, Tom Wopat and Kerry Butler). Here's yet another example of the supreme challenge of creating a show around an antihero, in this case convicted swindler and forger Frank Abagnale, Jr. The labored framing device of the 1960s television variety show did nothing to illuminate why we were supposed to care about a man who put other people's lives in danger in search of personal gratification. I'm not saying that it couldn't have worked. It just didn't.

8. Sister Act - It's funny, but a lot of people I talk to love Sister Act. What's also funny is that even when we compare notes and even agree upon the manifold flaws in the show, they still hold steadfastly onto their admiration and enjoyment. Go figure. For me, the score, from composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater, is inoffensive but unmemorable. The book by TV veterans Cheri Steinkellner and Bill Steinkellner, is bland and jokey, despite the efforts of Douglas Carter Beane, who was brought in to punch things up. There are a number genuine jaw-dropping miscalculations in the show, including one involving a trio of hoodlums planning on sexing up some nuns, and another involving a backup chorus of homeless people. Such choices, as well as the general lack of inspiration, must inevitably fall at the feet of director Jerry Zaks. Even the presence of supposed rising star Patina Miller in the Whoopi Goldberg role, and reliable stage pros Victoria Clark and Fred Applegate, failed to lift Sister Act above its uninspired material.

7. Wonderland - Composer Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde) had two productions on Broadway in 2011: Wonderland and Bonnie & Clyde. Both were financial and critical disasters, but, although Bonnie & Clyde had problems aplenty, Wonderland was much, much worse. At the end of act one of Wonderland, I turned to my theater companion and said, "Wow. That wasn't awful." But at the end of act two, I said, "Wow. That was awful." Wonderland was a gross miscalculation on so many levels, but the first half was moderately entertaining. Sure, the character numbers were plodding, and a listen or two to the cast recording reveals that there wasn't nearly as much there there as it seemed during the performance, but there was a fun sense of activity and it seemed as though the show was building toward something promising. And then came act two, which was an utter mess, veering off into the land of bland power ballads and lame deus ex machina. It was great to see Jose Llana and Karen Mason on Broadway, which is where they belong, but I look forward to the day when I see them again in shows more worthy of their talents.

6. Spider-Man 1.0 - You knew this one was coming. Yeah, Spider-Man is an easy target, but it was also genuinely bad, in both of its versions. But they were each bad in different ways, so I'm treating them separately on this list. Leaving aside all of the bad press, the infighting, the injuries, the lawsuits, I'm focusing here on the show itself. I'm listing Spidey 1.0 as slightly less awful than Spidey 2.0 simply because under the ministrations of Julie Taymor, the show may have been utterly incomprehensible and woefully misguided, but it was never boring. That might be because you had to keep on your toes simply to figure out what was going on on-stage. And I will always cherish the jaw-dropping hilarity of "Getting Furious," the now legendary second act number about Spidey's spirit guide (Nemesis? Love interest? Dental hygienist?) Arachne and her obsession with shoes. Yes, shoes. Trust me, if you didn't get to see it, it was an absolute hoot, although it clearly wasn't intended as such.

5. Spider-Man 2.0 - Once Julie Taymor got the boot, "creative consultant" Philip William McKinley and book doctor Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa set about making Spider-Man somewhat comprehensible. They succeeded in that respect, which only served to highlight what was still wrong with the show: that awful score. Bono and The Edge seem to have unfairly singled out Taymor as the main source of the show's troubles, neglecting to notice that they hadn't produced any decent songs. The up-tempo numbers are incomprehensible, and the ballads are beyond tedious. What we're left with is a streamlined and efficient series of circus acts pretending to be a musical. I'd say it was a waste of a Broadway theater, but our main consolation in this respect is that the Ford...er, Hilton...er, Foxwoods Theatre is a useless impersonal barn, and any show that would be likely to take Spider-Man's place would probably be another mindless, overblown, crowd-pleasing, lowest-common-denominator seeking spectacle.

4. Prometheus Bound - There were a lot of advocates for Prometheus Bound when it played the American Repertory Theater. And in truth, what was there on the stage had a lot going for it. My problem with the show was mostly based on what was not on the stage: a plot. Yes, I know, Prometheus Bound followed almost to the letter the Aeschylus play upon which it is based. But when was the last time a great, or even a good musical adhered strictly to its source material? Why adapt something if you have nothing to add? Director Diane Paulus certainly gave the show a lively and dynamic treatment. The cast, including Gavin Creel in the title role and the awe-inspiring Uzo Aduba as Io, was outstanding. But librettist/lyricist Steven Sater (Spring Awakening) didn't really give them anything inspiring to do. Composer Serj Tankian, lead vocalist for System of a Down, provided some hard-driving and even tuneful music. I would respectfully suggest that Sater enroll in the BMI Workshop, or a similar program, if he plans on continuing with musical theater. Maybe he'll get the support and feedback he needs to create more integrated songs and more cohesive libretti.

3. The People in the Picture - Many of the shows on this list have genuinely noble intentions, and none more so than The People in the Picture, presented last spring by the Roundabout Theatre Company. The show focused on the members of a Yiddish theater troupe in Poland during World War II and used their experiences as a lens through which to focus on the plight and treatment of the Jews during the Holocaust. I mean, how much more noble can you get? But, as I said in my review, the only thing that matters is what ends up on the stage, and in that sense The People in the Picture was a terrible mess. The book and lyrics by Iris Rainer Dart (Beaches) were riddled with clichés and schmaltz. The production's only redeeming value was Donna Murphy in the lead role, but the indignities foisted upon her - including a number in which she played a tap-dancing rabbi - were beyond even Ms. Murphy's ability to render effective or entertaining. The show produced a cast recording, but I can't imagine it catching on in regional theaters, except perhaps among the most earnest of Jewish performance ensembles.

2. The Blue Flower - Regular readers might recall that The Blue Flower was also on my list of the Worst Musicals of 2010. That listing was based on the show's 2010 run at the American Repertory Theater. (Read my original review.) The show then received a production at the Second Stage Theatre (2ST) in New York this past fall, and I list it again here based on revisiting the show at the 2ST. The Blue Flower seemed to change very little between its Cambridge and New York runs, at least not in any way that addressed or fixed what I considered to be the central flaws of the show: an egregious amount of narration and overly oblique lyrics. In fact, I disliked The Blue Flower even more in New York because the production was less visually interesting than the show had been at the ART. Here's another show with noble intentions: showing the effects of the two World Wars on the lives of a group of artists and intellectuals. But what frustrated me most about the show is how librettist/lyricist Jim Bauer seemed to be going out of his way to create a distance between the characters and the audience, turning what could have been a very moving show into a dull, enervating slog.

1. Baby It's You - The most lazy, cynical, and venal musical I've seen in many a year. Baby It's You has the ignoble distinction of being the absolute nadir of the songbook/jukebox/Boomer-pleasing concoctions. Not so much a musical as a marketing ploy, Baby It's You was a bald-faced attempt on the part of Warner Brothers and Universal Music Group to cash in on the monumental success of Jersey Boys using the songbook of The Shirelles. They might as well have just called it Jersey Girls: that at least would have tipped ticket-buyers off to the derivative and calculated nature of the show. Baby It's You was written and directed by Floyd Mutrux, who performed the same tasks on the marginally more entertaining Million Dollar Quartet. But whereas MDQ had the benefit of a long run in Chicago to work out an kinks in the material, Baby It's You played more like a slapdash, desperate rush job. Playing the central character Florence Greenberg, the stalwart Beth Leavel attempted to rise above the drivel, but as with Donna Murphy In The People in the PIcture, there's only so much even the most talented people can do when surrounded by such drek.